


Don't You Cry No More

by Kitmistry



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Coda, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, First Kiss, Fix-It, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27672193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitmistry/pseuds/Kitmistry
Summary: There has to be something, he told himself the first night he pulled an all nighter, only to wake up with his cheek smashed against a book, dark circles under his eyes, a throbbing headache, and nowhere closer to the answer than when he started. The light was still on above his head. He didn’t bother turning it off.Or the one where Dean doesn't die, but he searches for Cas instead.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 26
Kudos: 204





	Don't You Cry No More

**Author's Note:**

> It took me two, maybe two and a half days to process the ending and then decide it's absolute garbage so obviously I had to use all that frustration to fix it. Now, keep in mind that if you liked the episode, I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm actually happy some were satisfied with the ending and didn't have to deal with all the rage I was left with. But I wasn't and I still don't think any of the characters got the ending they deserved. So. 
> 
> Contains spoilers for the last three episodes of Supernatural. A huge thank you to [ fangirlingtodeath ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirlingtodeath513/pseuds/fangirlingtodeath513) for being my beta.

A knee slams into Dean’s stomach, and he doubles over on instinct, unable to fight it, even as he’s hyper aware of Sam on the floor—Sam with no weapon—two vampires blood thirsty and pissed between them—his own weapon lost somewhere on the dusty floor of the barn. He breathes in, clenches his muscles, tries to pull his spine straight, swing out at the solid wall of muscles to his right, but he’s still fighting the bile burning its way up his throat, and he’s too slow. He’s outnumbered. 

The vampires come for him. They grab him from the shoulders, flick him backwards. 

Dean hits the floor, breath knocked out of his chest, leaving him hollow and dizzy with the way the back of his head cracks against hard wood. Fucking hell, that’s gonna hurt for a long time, he thinks distantly, his pulse drumming inside his ears in time with the staccato of a pair of heels coming closer. 

Dean blinks. The two vampires still have him pinned down but neither has gone for his neck yet, and he guesses the woman who comes to stand above him is the reason. The world is still blurry around the edges, but her face slowly comes into focus.

“Hello, Dean,” she says.

Dean blinks again. Wrecks his brain for where he knows her from—comes up blank. “Hello… you,” he settles for at last. 

The corner of her lips tilts up with amusement. “You don’t remember me, do you? I don’t know why I expected any better from you—it’s Jenny. Does that ring any bells?”

_Actually, no, it doesn’t,_ Dean wants to say, but then, there’s the flash of a memory in the back of his mind, a fragment really, not even the whole story of that hunt back in…2005? 2006?—he’s sure it was sometime before they found Dad—a vampire nest they were investigating. There was that girl, they tried to save her but she’d already turned. The memory plays in quick black and white flashes, like a montage from a one-star horror film. Wait, her name was Jenny? 

“Jenny! Son of a bitch,” Dean says, playing up his cocky bravado and annoying smirk as the two vampire bouncers (vampbouncers? shit, that was terrible, even he has to admit it) pull him roughly to stand up. From the corner of his eye he can see Sam crawling for his knife. Dean can work with that. “Look at you!” he laughs, and turns to the vampmime to his right. “You know we tried to kill each other back in the day. Yeah. This is so weird.”

Jenny sighs, crosses her arms over her chest. Behind her, Sam is getting closer, fingers inching towards his knife. He needs just a few more seconds. 

“It’s like running into someone from high school, you know? Someone you don’t wanna see.” Dean makes a grimace, mouth pulling at the corner as if he’s trying to hide what he’s saying from Jenny, an inside joke for the vampire to his left; the mime doesn’t look amused, even with that creepy mask on—Dean’s talents are clearly wasted on him, and so he turns back to Jenny. “Well, you look good, yeah—a little dead, maybe, but good.”

“Thanks.” 

At least Jenny seems to have some sense of humor.

“So, you’re what, the big boss around here?”

“No. I just called dibs.” 

And with that, she opens her mouth, sharp teeth growing through her gums, head thrown back as she gets ready to go in for the killing bite. 

There’s the glint of metal against the moonlight, the whoosh of the blade as it slashes at air, through skin, sinew, muscle, and Jenny’s head rolls to the ground. Her body takes a split second longer to collapse, knees giving under her as if her string have been cut (heh), and Sam goes for the next vampire. Dean jerks out of their hold, twists, hits the vampire under the belt, brings his knee up to meet the monster’s nose as he doubles over in pain. It crunches as it breaks, but it’s not enough.

The vampire is bigger than Dean, stronger and faster. Dean circles him, brings his arms up in defense instead of offence, tries to turn every attack of the vampire against him—block the punch, grab the wrist, twist to break it. He fails. 

The vampire grabs his arm and throws him back with enough force that Dean lands almost on the other side of the barn. 

He’s up in an instant, hand flying to the beam closest to him for support, barely missing the rusty nail there. No time to think about it, the vampire bends his knees, brings his weight down and charges. 

Dean jumps forward, meets him halfway. 

The vampire has his arms around Dean, and he’s too strong, there’s no way Dean can stop him. His boots scratch the floor, his fingers clutch at the vampire’s jacket uselessly. 

At the last moment, he plants his foot on the floor, instead of fighting the force he goes with it, uses the momentum to spin them around, hands going from the vampire’s back to his chest, pushing, slamming the vampire against that beam and right onto that rusty nail. 

The vampire groans. 

It’s not going to kill him, but it does slow him down. Enough that Dean ducks for his knife, hand closing around the handle, and he turns, just as the vampire manages to pull himself free, swings his blade, and sends the vampire’s head to join Jenny’s.

Sam finishes off the last one in the next second, and the two of them are the only left standing, breathing hard, adrenaline rushing through their veins. 

“You okay?” Sam asks.

Dean stumbles forward, a dull pain shooting up his leg where he landed a little weird on it when the vampire threw him across the room. Once the heat of the battle drains from him he’s gonna feel much worse, but for now everything is still warm, and he needs to take advantage and cover up their hunt. He lets his knife clutter to the ground. “I’m fine. Can’t say the same thing for our dear Jenny, but she had it coming. Come on, let’s clean up and torch the place to take care of any evidence.”

“We should find the kids,” Sam says.

Dean shakes his head. “I doubt they’ll be anywhere close to here. I’ll put in an anonymous call to the police to go out and search for them. That has to be enough.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Are you in a hurry to get back home?”

“You’re not?” Dean asks. “Miracle can’t hold it in forever you know, and I don’t want to have to mop the entire bunker if I can avoid it.”

If Sam has any other objections, he doesn’t raise them. 

***

Someone’s trying to break down the door, and Dean knows he has to do something, he has to stop him, has to stop him—w _hy does this sound like a goodbye?_

Darkness rushes around them, and Dean can’t move, can’t close the distance between them.

“Because it is.”

The alarm goes off, and Dean’s eyes snap open. He doesn’t jerk up. Doesn’t gasp for air. He just lies there, feeling numb and empty. He turns his alarm off, and he breathes.

_I love you._

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. He never does these days. Though he avoids sleep and the dark as much as possible, tries to fight down the claws of panic that sneak under his ribs to squeeze his lungs painfully, he’s too tired. Sleep sneaks up on him most days. Most days he wakes up cold and terrified and hollow and wondering if he’s still curled against the wall down in the basement.

Miracle comes running through the door, bounces up on his bed to bury her face under his jaw, lick a wet line up his ear that makes Dean laugh. Arms wrapped around her, he pulls her against his chest, tucks her close and rocks them both from side to side. 

Most days she’s the only thing that drags him out of bed. 

Miracle is good company—she’s always excited to see him, even more excited to spend time with him, and there’s something about her constantly wagging tail that makes the bruise inside Dean’s chest ache slightly less. Taking care of her is comforting and easy, and there’s something about their daily routine that doesn’t allow Dean to break down like he wants to. He’s always on the edge these days, walking on a tight-rope, miles above the ground, and he can’t fall, he can’t collapse, because he still has work to do. 

Sam suggested that maybe they should take it easy, relax, and Dean considered it for all of forty seconds before he realised that without something to do his hands shake and his thoughts become too loud. 

Dean tried. God, he tried. He put on a happy face, he went to that pie festival, made fun of Sam for walking around with a towel wrapped around his head like the girl he is, and—

It didn’t work. 

Nothing works. 

Even hunting leaves him hollow now. Keeping busy doesn’t work anymore, because instead of taking his mind off everything it just reminds him how incompetent he is. It reminds him how moving half the Men of Letters library into his room and pouring over book after book didn’t give him the answer he wants. 

There has to be something, he told himself the first night he pulled an all nighter, only to wake up with his cheek smashed against a book, dark circles under his eyes, a throbbing headache, and nowhere closer to the answer than when he started. The light was still on above his head. He didn’t bother turning it off.

There has to be something, he told himself the second night.

And the third.

And the fourth.

The fifth he moved to his bed, beers and books and diagrams all scattered around him. There has to be something, but he can’t find it.

The sixth he went down on his knees, eyes tightly closed, hands clenched together on his bed. 

_Please._

_Please, come back to me._

_Please, I need you. I need you back, and I need to tell you that I—_ Lips thinning, eyes burning, Dean shook his head. There was something stuck in his throat, choking him, and he wouldn’t break down. _Please. Please._

He wasn’t giving up.

He _isn’t_ giving up. 

There has to be something.

And so, the eighth night, after praying had failed him, after Jack hadn’t answered his call, after the Men of Letters knowledge proved to be too limited to deal with this kind of problem, Dean turns his attention elsewhere. 

He summons Rowena. 

“No more deals, Dean,” she tells him, crossing the room to pour herself a glass of whiskey. “I’m sorry, but you know the new rules.”

“It’s not a deal,” Dean tells her, begs her. “I’m not asking your help as the queen of hell, I’m asking your help as the most powerful witch I know.”

Her eyes are sharp and calculating, travelling from his hollow cheeks to his five o’clock shadow, to his clothes that could do with some ironing—and washing if he’s being honest—to his feet as he shifts his weight. “What do you want from me, Dean?”

“I need to go to the Empty,” Dean says, breathless, eyes flitting towards the corridor; Sam went running, but he could be back any moment now. Dean’s not sure why he’s hiding this from Sam, except his gut twists uncomfortably every time Sam’s mouth thins at the mention of Cas, and he treats Dean like he’s made out of glass, like he’s a string pulled taut and about to snap, and Dean can’t stand being around him like that. 

So he’ll do this on his own. 

He’ll get Cas back.

Rowena sighs. Swirls the amber liquid in her glass for a moment. “And what are you going to do once you get there?”

“I’m going to—I will—” Dean opens and closes his mouth repeatedly like a goldfish. “You must have a spell to help me bring him back.”

Rowena raises her chin, authority and pity mixing battling over her expression. “I have no jurisdiction over the Empty, you know that.”

“Bullshit,” Dean says, irritation fizzing under his fingertips. “You’ve cheated death how many times now exactly?”

“That’s different.”

“How is that any different? It was your spell that brought Eileen back, and you had that hex back or whatever it was sewn in your leg and you—”

“Dean,” Rowena cuts him off, stern but not unkind. “Those times were different. Those spells were different. The hex back was a plan b, and Eileen, her spirit never left this realm. Is that the case for Castiel?”

Dean presses his lips together. “There has to be a way.”

“I’m sorry, Dean. Even if I do help you open a portal to the Empty, it won’t bring Castiel back. It’ll only get you killed.”

***

_Why does this feel like a goodbye?_

The door breaks down, dark billowing through the room, and Dean’s alarm goes off. The light is still on over his head. 

Miracle jumps on his bed, licks his face in greeting, and Dean has work to do. He goes through the motions—make breakfast, feed Miracle, take her out for a walk, do research, maybe find a case. 

He’s not giving up, he’s not. Despite what Rowena said and despite Jack’s deafening silence, Dean is not giving up. It’s just that he’s hands are shaking again, and there’s an itch under his skin, and he thinks killing something might fix it. 

He gets a call from someone who tells him about a string of murders out in Texas—Donna gave him Dean’s number apparently. It’s textbook werewolves, and he tells Sam so when he finds him in the library. 

“Okay, whoa, Dean,” Sam says, dropping his phone to turn his attention on his brother—Dean sees Eileen’s name on the screen. “Slow down. You want to go out on a hunt again?”

“You don’t?”

“We’ve barely been back from the last one,” Sam says. “And you—” he takes a long breath, as if bracing himself. “You don’t seem okay.”

Dean frowns, because if he doesn’t he’s going to crumble, and he won’t do that in front of Sam. “What are you talking about? I’m fine.”

Sam’s expression contorts too close to worry for Dean’s comfort. “This is about Cas, right?”

The name punches a hole through Dean’s gut, sharp and painful, and his breath hitches. He swallows past the lump in his throat, drops his gaze to Sam’s phone on the table, which buzzes with a new message—Eileen again, but Sam doesn’t check to see what it says. Dean wishes he would, so that maybe Sam’s attention wouldn’t be on Dean. 

“You never,” Sam says. Hesitates. “You never said what happened. How he…”

“Does it matter?” Dean asks, the words razor-sharp and terrible and hurting no one but himself. 

Sam shakes his head. He opens his mouth, ready to say something that Dean doesn’t want to hear, doesn’t need to hear, like how Cas was selfless and heroic, and he probably would have wanted Dean to move on, and Dean knows that. He knows all that, and he knows more than Sam, knows more than Sam will ever know or understand, and the words are burning up his throat, the truth looming between them like a grenade seconds from exploding, except Dean is the grenade, and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to piece himself back together if he explodes now.

_I love you._

Dean chokes on the words, but he has to say something, he has to, because Sam will keep pressuring him, and Dean is only human, can last only so long. 

“How’s Eileen?” Dean asks, and the crack in his voice is barely noticeable. “You seen her recently?”

Sam, the giant dork, blushes. Fumbles, hand instinctively going for his phone. “She’s fine. Yeah, she’s good. We went out a couple of days ago, and it was… you know.” He trails off. “We talked about a lot of stuff. We actually talked about… about maybe retiring.”

“Retiring,” Dean repeats flatly. He thinks of Cas, alone in the Empty. He thinks of the towers of books growing taller in his room every night. He thinks of a job application still waiting on his desk, a piece of paper he picked up one day because he thought maybe moving on would be easier until he tried putting pen to paper and it felt like he’d put a knife through his own stomach.

He’s not stupid, though. He knows his brother has been spending most nights at Eileen’s house lately. He knows that the two of them must be eager to enjoy the time they have together now, knowing that things could have been much different. He knows it’s only right Sam gets to live a normal life.

But Dean can’t retire yet. Not until he saves Cas. 

“Not now,” Sam is saying. “But we could start passing hunts to other hunters, taking on cases closer to home, maybe we could get a real home. Hell, I’m sure Miracle would love a backyard.”

Dean has stopped listening. 

***

He waits until he sees Sam leaving with an overnight bag. He waits until he hears the door of the bunker close behind Sam, and he then waits some more. 

With Sam off to spend the night at his girlfriend’s again, Dean has the whole bunker to himself. Distantly, he thinks that Sam is probably trying to protect Dean by not bringing Eileen here, maybe he thinks he’s rubbing salt in the wound, and he doesn’t even know what happened that night. Now, Dean has a few choice words for Sam treating him like a porcelain doll that might break any moment, but tonight it’s mighty convenient that Sam’s out of the bunker so he won’t complain.

He leaves Miracle to roam, and he gathers the ingredients he needs. 

The Men of Letters couldn’t help him. Jack still hasn’t answered Dean’s prayers or calls. Rowena refused to open the portal for him.

Well, screw them. 

Dean still has an ace up his sleeve. 

Sergei wasn’t that eager to help him, but unlike Rowena, he was much more easy to convince. Dean may have needed the help of his gun to do so, but he has the spell safely tucked in his pocket now. The end justifies the means. 

It’s a simple spell, surprisingly. The trick is that it needs an archangel’s grace, but Dean’s a lucky son of a bitch, and he still has a vial of the grace Asmodeus had extracted from Gabriel. Cas had insisted back when they’d retrieved the vial that the grace must not be used at any cost, but Dean says screw it. Gabriel’s dead, he won’t need the grace anymore. Dean on the other hand, has a chance to save Cas if he uses it. 

***

The Empty really is empty. Not that Dean can see anything past his nose really. It’s just an endless void of darkness. Heart beating fast under his ribcage, Dean takes a step forward. Turns around. He doesn’t even know where to begin. Where is Cas supposed to be?

Maybe praying will work, he thinks, but before he can do anything, he blinks, and there’s Meg. 

“You,” she says sharply, thinly veiled anger underlining her words. “What are you doing here? Humans don’t belong in the Empty.”

Dean has a hunch this is not really Meg. She looks like her, but there’s something about her, something that radiates ancient power, a weight to her presence maybe, that reminds Dean more of Amara or Billie than a demon. 

Fighting down the fear turning his blood cold, he rolls his shoulders back.

“I’m here for Cas,” he says.

“Castiel?” She spits the name out like it personally offends her. “He’s not here. I wish he were so I could make him pay for all the sleep I’ve lost, but he’s not. Your new god promised not to interfere, but that was another sweet lie of his.”

Dean’s heartbeat is frantic and loud. He’s not sure he understands what she’s telling him. “Cas isn’t here?”

“You know what? I would really appreciate it if people stopped bothering me already.” She raises her hand, clutches her fist— a sharp pain blooms inside Dean’s chest, like shrapnel lodged between his ribs, getting bigger and bigger, burning him, consuming him. 

He falls to his knees. 

“I can’t touch Castiel anymore,” she says, face hard. “But I can do the next best thing. Killing you will be just as good as if I’d killed him.”

She tightens her fingers, and Dean doubles over. His whole body aches. Every breath is agonizing. His muscles are being teared apart from the inside out. 

Dean’s vision is going black around the edges, and he hates her, he hates her for taking Cas from him, hates her for lying to him now, hates her for the smug little smile that plays at the corner of his lips. If only he wasn’t a weak little human fighting with something so much bigger than him. 

There’s a tick to her expression, a downward twist to her mouth, and Dean can barely see now.

“No, wait,” she says. “Wait, he’s—”

There’s a white light, washing over him, casting everything in brightness until they fade away. And Dean fades out, too.

***

Dean gasps awake. 

It’s dark all around him. He can’t see anything. Panic claws up his throat, and he jerks up at the same time something solid and furry lands on his lap, and a wet tongue licks a stripe up his face.

“Jesus, Miracle,” Dean says, but he exhales in relief. If Miracle is here then he has to be back at the bunker. 

There’s a click, and the light turns on, blinding him. On instinct, Dean throws a hand over his face. There’s a figure standing by the light switch, still hazy in the searing light that hovers even behind Dean’s lids, but he’d know that figure everywhere.

“Cas,” he breathes, and he has to blink the flash away, keep Miracle down, scramble out of bed, cross the room. 

Dean’s legs get tangled in the sheet, and he crushes inelegantly to the floor with a curse.

Instantly there are hands on him, warm and solid, careful as they help him up, and Dean breathes again. “Cas,” he says, still not convinced this is not a dream. Or Heaven. “You’re here.”

Cas squints at the room around them. “I am,” he confirms. “I—I don’t know how I got here. I was— I think Jack sent me.”

“Jack?” Dean asks. “You’ve spoken with Jack?”

“The one time he got me from the Empty,” Cas says, and the line of his mouth tilts downwards, eyes falling to the floor between them. “He wanted to ask me a few things about Heaven. Make sure I was okay with...with being human.”

“You’re human.” Dean knows he sounds stupid. This is not even what he’s meant to be saying. He had a whole speech prepared in his mind, all the things left unsaid between them, but somehow he can’t recall a single one of them right now in a way that makes sense. All he can think about is that Cas is here, Cas is human, Cas was never in the Empty, and if Jack saved Cas all that time ago, then where has Cas been this whole time?

A familiar voice wakes up in the back of his mind, suspiciously close to his father’s drawl when it says, _he was alive this whole time, here this whole time, and he didn’t come back to you because he doesn’t want you, he doesn’t feel for you that way, he could never feel for you that way,_ and Dean stomps it down with all the will-power he has left. 

He lost Cas so many times, and this time he came very close to never getting him back. This time he’ll make sure there’s no space for any misunderstanding between them. 

But just as Dean opens his mouth, Cas squints at him and says instead, “What did you do? Jack said he wouldn’t be interfering anymore. If I’m here and you’re here then you must have done something to force his hand.”

Dean snaps his mouth closed. Swallows. Lets his eyes wander over Castiel’s face, the line of his jaw, the tip of his nose, the pink of his lips, the way his brows knit together in the center of his forehead, and Jesus, Dean just wants to kiss him. 

“I went to the Empty,” he says instead. “For you. I went to the Empty for you.”

Cas’ eyes widen, impossibly big and blue, and Dean goes a little weak at the knees. “You did what? Dean, I can’t believe you’d be so foolish, so—”

“So imagine my surprise,” Dean cuts him off, fingers itching to reach for him, but he doesn’t. He won’t until he’s sure. “Imagine my surprise when you tell me you’ve been a human this whole time.”

Cas drops his gaze to the ground in shame. Good. He should be ashamed. 

“Why didn’t you—” Dean doesn’t know how to finish this sentence without laying his whole self bare for Castiel. In the end he figures it doesn’t matter if he does. “Why didn’t you come back to me?”

Cas closes his eyes, takes a steadying breath. “I didn’t know if I was welcome back. If you’d want me. After what I said, after what I’ve become, and I—”

Dean can’t take it anymore. 

He brings both hands up to grab Cas’ face and he pulls him in, crushes their mouths together, swallows the surprised noise Cas makes in the back of his throat. He kisses Castiel to breathlessness, pouring everything he has into this one kiss, hoping Cas will get it, will finally get it, and stop running away from him. 

Cas hands fist on the front of Dean’s shirt, and he pushes Dean away, far enough that their noses are not touching, but close enough that his breath hits Dean every time he pants. “You—Dean, why did you—”

“Castiel,” Dean says, gently now, cupping his jaw and titling his chin up to make sure Cas has nowhere else to look but back at him. “I love you, too. Of course I do. Jesus, how can you ever think you can’t have me? All you had to do was ask.”

Realization blooms over Castiel’s face, bright like the dawn of a new day, and Dean is so in love with him it physically hurts not to kiss him again. 

“Or listen, you stubborn asshole,” he adds, because Dean’s still Dean, and the only way he knows how to deal with feelings, even now, is with a hint of shitty humor. “Maybe if you had let me say everything I had to say back in purgatory, you’d—”

Cas kisses him then, a hand on the back of Dean’s neck, fingers in his hair to tag him closer, and every other coherent thought fizzles out. Dean smiles against Cas’ lips and feels Cas’ lips mirror it. He thinks that there are plenty of things he still wants to say, imagines the same is true for Cas, but right not they can wait. Right now there’s nothing but them, the way their mouths fit together, the heat between them, and Dean bursting with happiness. 

For now there’s nothing else he’d rather do than kiss Cas. 

***

When they emerge out of the bunker hand in hand, Miracle in tow, there’s the steady beat of rain to welcome them. Dean tilts his face up to it, lets the drops run down his face. Feels Cas squeeze his hand. 

Biting down his smile, Dean leads them to the car—he might enjoy the rain now, but he knows he’ll regret it if his baby smells like a wet dog for the next week. He wants to lock himself in with Cas for the next week without anyone disturbing them, but they have time to do that later. Now, he can drive up to Eileen’s house and tell her and Sam how, despite fucking up his last hunt completely, he still got Cas back—thanks to Jack. They can celebrate all together today.

Dean and Cas have the rest of their lives to spend together after all. 

  
  
  



End file.
